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Transcriptions of the Syamasundara: …his presence among us and the special knowledge which now lives within us and delivers us from the ravages of material sufferings. Can you imagine that Srila Prabhupada actually lived with us and how fortunate are those among us with whom Srila Prabhupada played out his divine unfolding of the Bombay yatra. His Grace Bhima dasa has asked us to try to recreate those times and the mood of that period in our evolution in Krishna consciousness. So I take you back and ask you to come back with us to the year 1970. Perhaps most of you were not even born at that time or were very young. So this is 1970. Srila Prabhupada has been in the Western world for about five years, and in five years he has done the almost unthinkable task of planting Krishna consciousness all over the Western world. He has developed huge temples in Los Angeles and New York and San Francisco, all over the United States of America, Canada, in England, London, Germany, Paris. He has conquered the Western world and planted the Hare Krishna mantra deeply into Western culture in five years time only. And those of us who had acted as his instruments for this great expansion, you must keep in mind we had only a vague and a somewhat mythical idea of what India was. In those days, there were no television documentaries about India, there were no computers, there were very few books about India. No one who we knew had ever been to India. In fact, there were no Indian people living in the West yet at that time, very few. There were almost no Indian devotees. To us, India was a place of snake charmers with the cobras coming out of the baskets, or those guys that made a rope go in the air and they climbed the rope into the clouds. That was India. It was a mythical idea. We had no clear knowledge what was India. There were no pictures available to us, scarcely any pictures even of Krishna. We didn't have a clear idea, what does Krishna look like? But we had the person India as the center of our lives: the Swami, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. We had seen and drank deeply of his beauty and heard his enchanting words. We saw his face and his body so composed and jovial, his skin was golden and ever-fresh, and his analysis of things was always pitch perfect, and his movements were the definition of grace. He had solved all of our problems. He had eliminated the concept that there was a problem in our lives, and he had filled us in that five-year period with a very focused energy and enthusiasm. "So," Srila Prabhupada said to us, "let us go to India." And we said, "Great! Let's go!" So just like that, without any plans, almost no planning, we got on airplanes and we came to India. We came as a two-prong attack. A group of devotees from the West Coast, Los Angeles, California, they came in one group; and a group of us from London, from England, came in another group. And these two groups and with a few stragglers, we met here in Bombay, the gateway to India. I think the month was October month, 1970. Am I correct on that, do you know? It was around the early autumn of 1970 we arrived in India with no plans, no leaders, no clear idea what we were doing here, only that Srila Prabhupada had told us we should come to India and that he would meet us here and we would spread Krishna consciousness throughout India. Immediate impressions: we were flooded when we arrived here with all of the sensations of India. Remember, we knew nothing of India. Where we came from everything was cold and culturally very restricted, and spreading Krishna consciousness was a bit of a difficulty for us at all times. [break] …cheating, all of the little cheating that went on on a daily basis, and the black resistance of entrenched interests, and the bureaucracies, oh, my goodness. But the magic prevailed, and Krishna's forces overpowered everything. I should say the magic and the humor because along with this wonderful feeling that Krishna was doing some kind of magic show and that we were willing participants in this show and we were honored to be part of this show, one of my most wonderful memories of that period was the humor that we shared as a group. I just remember laughing all the time about the various pranks that we played on each other, and the imitations that some of the devotees could do with some of these Indian characters we were beginning to meet here in Bombay, how they could imitate the humorous side of our relationship. So as Srila Prabhupada spread himself across India, he left a small team of us in Bombay. Our job was to make life members. He came up with a life membership program as a way to earn our keep. Remember, still we had very few friends, no place to stay, very little scope. Only we had this program to make life members; and on that life membership program, I think it was 1,111 rupees or something like that, we lived on that income. We promised that when the books would come out, we would deliver the books. We had no books but we promised, "When we get the books, you will have them." In that way, we became very bold. I should say we did things in a very bold and forward manner, almost out of desperation, to get these life members so that we could live. Such people as Ramchand Chabria, Sri Ramchand Chabria. I don't know if he's still with us. He's still ticking, eh? Great. Man: He just bought a building (inaudible). Syamasundara: Oh, wonderful. Oh, I want to see him. He gave us his nice hotel down in Colaba on the beach, Sea Palace Hotel, and we all stayed there, boys separate from girls. Sadujivadlal(?), the sweet maker, big guy, the sweetball king, he gave me a 1952 Chevrolet. So we had wheels, we had a place to stay, and Bombay was our oyster. We went for it. This boldness was helped along by a bit of transcendental competition among the godbrothers and godsisters. We vied with each other to create the most life members, to get more life members than the next guy so that we could write Prabhupada and tell him, "I made four life members today," when someone else would only make three or two. Or one. Because although we were motivated in a kind of selfish way that we were feeling Krishna's magic, I think the deepest motivation was our deep, deep, deep desire to please our spiritual master because his approval or disapproval of our actions was the end all and be all of our lives. We lived for these letters that came from Prabhupada that said, "You're doing a good job." We relished more than anything else when he was in Bombay to make our reports to him at the end of the day, to go to his room and make our report. I always talk about this feeling, and I know that it's shared by my godbrothers and sisters - standing outside of Srila Prabhupada's room with your hand on the doorknob ready to enter with your daily report to present, the wonderful feeling of anxiety and excitement at the same time, knowing that no matter what happened in the next few minutes it was going to be wonderful, wonderful just to sit with Prabhupada. And you could never predict what Prabhupada was going to do or say, ever. If you even thought what might happen, you were wrong. Prabhupada was a constant surprise. And this surprise, this excitement but with an underlying anxiety was an emotion that none of us had ever felt before, and it drove us. We knew by now that the bigger splash that we made for Krishna, the more that Srila Prabhupada's eyes would light up. We lived to see his eyes light up and get big with some accomplishment, and his pleasure was our pleasure. That's the end of that story. But we could see early on that Srila Prabhupada's movement, after the initial rush, could very easily be swallowed up unless we made a very strong statement. I don't remember how it came about, the details, whether Srila Prabhupada suggested it or as a group we decided upon it or maybe it was my idea, I don't remember. But we had seen these small pandal shows…we'd consider a pandal like this size as a very small one…around Bombay, and we came up with the idea to have the world's largest pandal program because we thought that by doing this that we could establish that Srila Prabhupada was rightfully recognized as the king of India's gurus; and a more perfectly balanced team to organize and pull off this pandal program you could not even have planned. Everyone who took part in organizing this program at Cross Maidan was perfectly appointed by Krishna to perform in some way or other. Gurudas and Rishi Kumar and Giriraja and all the girls, Malati and Yamuna, and everyone was running around doing separate things. So we were able to, by hook or by crook, I don't remember, probably more of the latter, we were able to secure the Cross Maidan, the largest venue in Bombay. We introduced something new to India. From our experience, we introduced the Western media-style advertising. To some extent, the show business industry in India had started with the hoardings of the upcoming movies and these were posted around Bombay, but no one had advertised yet on the scale that we advertised for this pandal program. It had never been done before, but we got some guy to make us a huge balloon that floated on a rope maybe 100, 200 feet above Cross Maidan with giant letters, HARE KRISHNA, flashing at night in lights. You could see it all over Bombay. This was never before heard of. One of the new young boys who was coming around, a Parsi boy who became initiated by Prabhupada as Mahamsa dasa, his family had a very prominent advertising…Selvel Advertising firm here in Bombay. So he was able to procure us all the best hoardings in town. We made giant hoardings saying "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna," that's all, with the name of Cross Maidan and the dates. We even got a skyscraper building downtown, a seven-story skyscraper, and had letters painted, "Hare Krishna," down the side of this skyscraper, you could see it for miles. So the buzz began in Bombay. "What are these Hare Krishna? Who are they? What's going on here? We better go check this out." And you all know, anyway, that it was an overwhelming success, and it put the Hare Krishna Movement on the map in India. It was our first major tidal wave. Prabhupada's fame spread out from Bombay like a tidal wave. There were hit songs written about Krishna, there were movies coming out about Krishna, and most of all this made Srila Prabhupada very, very happy, this pandal program. And his happiness is our happiness. Shortly after this pandal program I left Bombay with Srila Prabhupada for Russia, and that was the beginning of a 20-month tour as his secretary. So I can't speak with a lot of firsthand knowledge about the events that unfolded in Bombay after that. So I would like to turn over the speaking to some of the members like Madhudvisa, who was here in Bombay at that time. We need to talk about it. Why don't you come up and talk about your memories of the early days in Bombay. One of the best things that happened at this pandal program is that Radhanatha Goswami came to Krishna consciousness as a result, as a direct result. So he's going to have to tell us about that one too. Madhudvisa, we had been in Bombay for a number of months. We had been planning things here and doing things, but then you came with Prabhupada, right, in January? Madhudvisa: Yes. |